


Dennie's Rules for Wade

by spacekc929



Series: Dennie's Rules for Wade [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Anxiety, Belting, Corporal Punishment, Daddy Kink, Daddy/boy relationship, Discipline, M/M, Power Exchange, Praise, self-topping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:21:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25734973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacekc929/pseuds/spacekc929
Summary: The not-really-a-boy is finally getting used to his Daddy Dom’s Rules. But the boy still secretly thinks he can write better Rules than Daddy Dom can. Daddy Dom disabuses him of that notion quickly enough.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Dennie's Rules for Wade [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1861339
Comments: 5
Kudos: 69





	Dennie's Rules for Wade

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second story in a series--it's not technically necessary to read the first one before reading this one, but Dennie and Wade's relationship will make a lot more sense with that background.

A couple years ago, Wade had gotten sick of having to walk twelve-and-a-half minutes to the UPS Store and pay seventy cents per minute, ten cents per page, to print things from the UPS computer. So Wade had invested in a black-and-white printer that had a Wi-Fi connection and a scanner, which he’d set up in his home office on a shelf underneath the desk.

That meant Wade was perfectly capable of printing out a new copy of the Rules anytime he wanted. But Dennie had printed this one off his own printer while Wade’s bum burned from a scolding, so this was Dennie’s paper and Dennie’s ink. Wade liked this copy’s soft, crinkled folds, the paper smoothed from weeks of constant handling. Wade read the Rules from this piece of paper every single night, despite the fact that he’d already memorized them ages ago.

Dennie’s Rules for Wade

  1. Always obey Dennie’s Rules and orders.
  2. Never obey rules or orders that Dennie didn’t give you.* 
    * *For purposes of this Rule, you may obey orders from your work supervisors as well as orders from law enforcement and emergency personnel.



(Dennie hadn’t even thought Wade was stupid to ask for the footnote!)

  1. Never assume Dennie means something different than what Dennie said.
  2. Never lie to Dennie. (Sneakiness counts.) You may, however, state that you do not wish to talk about something.
  3. Never call Dennie “Mr. Henderson” out loud, even if you can’t always manage it in your head.
  4. Always inform Dennie if you break a Rule and he doesn’t know about it.



This list had actually started orally on their first night together. That worked fine for the first few Rules, but when Dennie started adding more, Wade began to get nervous. His memory wasn’t one of his strong suits: what if he forgot one? Or worse, what if he misheard Dennie and then remembered it incorrectly? Wade was a visual learner. He needed these things written down. He’d spent an entire week tricking Dennie into stating the Rules out loud and then running off to another room to secretly chronicle them on a spare legal pad, word for word. Then he’d spent the entire week after that, in a nervous frenzy that he’d written them down incorrectly, coaxing Dennie into restating all the Rules so he could run off to the other room and painstakingly check them.

Dennie eventually cottoned on, which had resulted in the “sneakiness” addendum to the “no lying” Rule and a scolding (his hand to Wade’s butt).

Then Dennie sat them down on the couch—without regard for Wade’s smarting ass—opened up his laptop, and created a new Google Document to write down all the Rules in one place, which had the effect of formalizing them with numbers. Wade had curled up next to him, clutching Dennie’s arm a little shyly, and they read the Rules out loud together to make sure everything sounded okay. (That was when Wade suggested the Rule #2 footnote.)

Dennie printed out the first physical copy of it. He also shared the document to Wade’s email, and then remarked, with a wry grin, “Viewing privileges only, kid.”

Wade kept the Rules in his nightstand so that he could review them before sleeping each night. Rule #5 had taken some time to get used to, so every night Wade repeated Dennie’s name in his head a few times to normalize it. _Dennie. Dennie. Dennie._ None of Wade’s Doms had ever let him call them not only by their first name, but by a _diminutive_. Wade still thought of Dennie as Mr. Henderson from time to time, but he didn’t verbalize it anymore: Dennie washed his mouth out with soap each time, so Wade had basically broken that habit.

Wade was worried about Rule #6 in particular; each day, as he lied under the blanket with his crumpled list, he pored over every choice he’d made to ensure he hadn’t broken any Rules without realizing it. He never had. But what if he did? What if he didn’t realize he broke one until days later—would Dennie punish him for the delay? Wade didn’t know what would happen then. Surely Wade could infer that the Rule only kicked in once Wade realized he’d broken a rule?

But then again, was that really a reasonable inference? Wade didn’t usually break Rules on purpose: in fact, usually when he broke the Rules he didn’t even know he’d broken them. Rule #3 remained the biggest culprit.

Exhibit 1: Wade wore a glittery blue top to Frau Lick to sit with Dennie at the bar one night. Dennie had grinned, winked, and said his shirt was “stylish” and “popped.” Wade nearly made it out of the bar so he could drive home and change into something less feminine and embarrassing. Then Dennie caught him, dragged him into the cleaning closet, blistered his butt, and made him repeat, out loud, a couple dozen times, “Dennie thinks my shirt is hot.”

Exhibit 2: Wade’s law firm threw a big party. Dennie offered to go with him. Wade, knowing just how awful law firm parties were, had assumed it was a joke and thought no more of it. Then Dennie showed up at the party wearing a suit and a frown, asking Wade why he hadn’t picked him up. Dennie’s punishment had been a little more creative that time: he’d made Wade accompany him to his coworker's niece’s sixth birthday party and put Wade on brat patrol. The T-shirt he’d worn still smelled like cream cheese frosting even after three washes. (He’d kind of liked that punishment.)

Exhibit 3: They lied next to each other in bed, totally sated. Dennie’s finger traced an idle pattern on Wade’s bare chest. Dennie murmured something about Wade having a perfect body. “You’re an asshole,” Wade muttered, turning his back on Dennie to hide his humiliated tears. Wade got three things for that well-thought-out remark: a spanking, his mouth washed out with soap, and Dennie’s cock in his ass (again) “as an assurance that I truly do think your body is perfect, my dearest.”

Whenever Dennie was about to punish him for a Rule #3 violation, a small spark of defiance always raged in Wade’s heart: normal people weren’t unfailingly honest like Mr. Henderson was; normal people didn’t just compliment their significant others out of the blue without expecting anything in return. Wade had learned this the hard way by accepting people’s kindnesses at face value too many times, only for them burst into laughter at Wade’s gullibility and self-importance. (“You didn’t think I really meant it when I said you were hot, did you? God, you’re such an egotistical slut.”) So it wasn’t really Wade’s fault that he kept assuming Dennie was bullshitting him. Everyone else did.

But the defiance always fizzled by the end of the spanking. Punishment always re-reminded him that his habit of misinterpreting Dennie’s plain and unambiguous statements was just a defense mechanism, something he’d learned to do to protect himself from others’ cruelty. Dennie had taught Wade that when he used that habit against Dennie, it was Wade’s subconscious attempt to maintain control and protect himself. But he didn’t need to do that with Dennie because Dennie kept him safe. Wade couldn’t submit to Dennie by making assumptions; he could only submit by listening to what Dennie told him and trusting it was true.

But trusting Dennie during the afterglow of a spanking was one thing; trusting Dennie all the time was harder. It seemed like Wade was always getting into trouble, and that he never quite understood what had gotten him into trouble until Dennie, in his calming, ever-steady voice, explained exactly how Wade had so woefully misunderstood him.

What Wade really didn’t understand was how Dennie didn’t get sick of punishing him over, and over, and over, and over again.

***

In his mind’s eye, Wade had imagined that if he ever needed to tell Dennie about a Rule violation pursuant to #6, he’d be the perfect submissive about it. He’d go to Dennie immediately, sink to his knees, and smoothly explain what had happened. Dennie would ruffle his hair, tell him, “I’m proud that you were honest.” Dennie would smile at him and tell him he was precious. Dennie would punish him, of course, but Wade’s forthrightness would earn him a reprieve from the paddle—he’d get a more intimate hand spanking instead. Then after that, they would make love all night long.

But it turned out that the first time Wade broke a Rule outside of Dennie’s presence, Wade was a total chickenshit about it.

It was just a slip of the tongue to Janine. She was one of the other paralegals, and she always needed help with something. Nevertheless, Wade liked talking to her because she was a veritable font of office gossip, so they usually snuck off around 10:30 or 11:00 to grab a cup of coffee and walk around the park. 

“Did you hear?” Janine asked, the winter sunlight glinting off her coal-black hair and illuminating her deep brown eyes. “Hestia and Jack have hired a new babysitter.”

Hestia and Jack were two of the law firm’s partners who had dated in secret for years and then went public, got married, and took in a foster kid. Needless to say, now that their drama was mostly settled, they weren’t as interesting to talk about as they used to be. “Slow gossip day, huh?”

Janine chuckled, taking a sip of her steaming hot caramel latte between shivers. “Yeah, I got nothing good. You?”

“Julia left early yesterday. No idea why. She looked a little frazzled.”

“I wonder if it’s about her mom?”

The two of them looped around the pond a few times, idly exchanging more meaningless chitchat, when Janine asked, “By the way, how’s your boytoy?”

Janine had their roles completely backwards, but Wade wasn’t about to correct her. “Oh, Mr. Henderson’s good.”

“ _Mister_ Henderson?”

Wade took in a sharp breath. Where the hell had that come from? He hadn’t called Dennie that in weeks. “Uh, haha, I mean, it’s just an inside joke Dennie and I have.” Wade forced a laugh.

“Are you two doing some kind of Fifty Shades of Grey thing?” Janine asked suspiciously.

“Dear Lord,” Wade murmured. “No, Janine. It’s nothing like that.” Janine may have sort of been Wade’s friend, but she was not trustworthy with deeply personal information like whether Wade let his ‘boytoy’ spank him for disobedience. “It’s, uh. It’s his… dad.” Wade knew nothing about Dennie’s parents. Was that a problem? Shouldn’t lovers know that kind of thing? “People were always saying, ‘Mr. Henderson,’ and both of them would turn around, and it was funny.” It wasn’t funny at all. This was in fact one of the most boring stories Wade had ever made up. “I guess you had to be there.”

Janine did not look convinced, so Wade resigned himself to having rumors about his ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ relationship sweep the office by the afternoon.

But the more pressing issue was the Rule #5 violation. It really had come out of nowhere, that old habit of calling his Doms by a respectful title that Wade had thought was long broken. The paper document of the Rules was at home, so when Wade sat back down at his desk, he pulled up the Google Doc to confirm that he’d definitely broken the Rule. (He didn’t really need to read it; he knew it by heart.) Yep—it just said not to call Dennie Mr. Henderson _out loud_. There was no exception in the Rule for saying it to a third-party instead of directly to Dennie.

Okay, this wasn’t so bad. He’d broken Rule #5, but if he just told Dennie about it, Dennie wouldn’t be too mad. A Rule #5 violation wasn’t that serious and had only ever resulted in having his mouth washed out with soap, and he hadn’t broken it in a while. No, Dennie wouldn’t be very mad. So long as Wade _told_ him.

Wade moved down to Rule #6 and studied it. He knew this one by heart too, but because he’d never broken a Rule without Dennie knowing, he’d never realized something was missing from it. He was required to tell Dennie that he’d broken a Rule anytime Dennie didn’t know he’d broken it, but the Rule didn’t specify _when_ he was supposed to tell Dennie about it. Would it break the Rule if he didn’t tell Dennie immediately? Within the day? Within the week?

Wade hated this sort of uncertainty. It seemed like whenever something was left up to his judgment, he made the wrong call. Wade took a deep breath to calm some of the anxiety that the situation had incited and thought it through for a minute before landing on a solution. He would tell Dennie about the violation immediately, because he couldn’t go wrong by doing that, and then later he would ask Dennie to tell him the Rule’s time limits.

Wade was satisfied that he’d come up with the best possible plan, so he whipped out his phone from his pocket and dialed Dennie’s number. Too late he realized that Dennie might not be up yet, given that he had worked until 2:30am the night before.

Dennie picked up on the third ring. “Wade?”

Uh oh. Dennie didn’t sound like he’d just woken up, but he also didn’t sound like he was in a very good mood. “Um, hi,” Wade mumbled. “Is this—I can call you at a different time, if this is a bad time.”

“It’s fine,” Dennie sighed. “I just got off the phone with Greg.” His coworker. “He has ‘food poisoning,’” Dennie couldn’t disguise his irritated skepticism, “so now I have to go in early to cover for him. _And_ finish out my regular shift.”

“How early do you have to go in?”

“At 2:30.”

Oh dear Lord. Dennie was about to work a _twelve-hour_ shift on his feet at the bar, and in just a couple hours! Whatever timeframe Rule #6 was supposed to encompass, this couldn’t possibly be the right time to bother Dennie with his Rule violation. It would just annoy Dennie more on top of his already frustrating day to have to correct Wade’s deficiencies (again). “Um, well at least you’ll get overtime,” Wade said, aware of how inadequate of a response it was.

“Silver linings and all. Is everything alright, dear?”

“F-fine. I just, um, was bored at my lunchbreak and thought I would give you a call.” Wade plastered on his fakest, most shit-eating grin in the hopes that some cheeriness would transfer into his voice and cover up his deception.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. By the way, do you get along with your parents?” Wade asked, his anxiety about this horrible phone call forcing him to blurt out the first question that came to mind.

“Ah. They’ve both passed, kid. But I was pretty close to both of them.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Wade could not believe how poorly this conversation was going. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“Don’t be,” Dennie chuckled. “I like to talk about them when I can. My dad was one of the coolest guys I knew; the first one I came out to, and he became a card-carrying member of PFLAG in response. What about your parents? Are you close?”

“Not—not particularly,” Wade hedged. “I’ve gotta go back to work now,” Wade lied, unable to reduce his abruptness. “Text me if you get bored during your long shift.”

“You could always drop by,” Dennie suggested. Wade could hear the bawdy eyebrow-raise through his voice. “We can take my break together.”

So Dennie wanted to fuck him in the cleaning closet. “Um, uh, I’ll think about it, bye now!” Wade hung up.

So now this was bad. He’d not only broken the Mr. Henderson Rule, but then he’d lied. Twice! Three Rule violations total. Wade didn’t know what to do. His guilt was already starting to eat him apart, but he couldn’t confess until it was convenient for Dennie. Wade might have been an awful submissive, but even he wasn’t so selfish and needy that he’d make Dennie drop everything and waste his valuable free time just to make Wade feel better. 

No—there was a more mature solution. Wade ripped a clean sheet of legal paper from the pad on his desk and scribbled down each of his infractions, along with the date and times, so he didn’t forget exactly what he’d done. Once he was satisfied, he stuck the piece of paper into his messenger bag: he’d hold onto this until Dennie wasn’t busy and turn it over the first moment that it made sense.

* * *

Wade had seemed a bit strange on the phone, so Dennie wasn’t really expecting him to turn up at the bar that night during his shift. It was a Tuesday night, so it was slow, and Dennie had spent the past fifteen minutes just browsing the news on his phone.

Around 7:30, though, the door swung open and his little boy, all bundled up in a beanie and parka, stumbled through the entryway. Wade’s chestnut cheeks were flushed from the cold. Dennie frowned to note that Wade wasn’t wearing gloves.

Wade took his normal seat on the furthest end of the bar, setting his messenger bag and beanie on the bar and draping his coat over the adjacent stool. Wade gave Dennie a furtive little glance before dropping his eyes down the bar.

“Why, I’ve never seen such a fine-looking boy in here before,” Dennie flirted, capturing one of Wade’s hands and pressing a chaste kiss onto the knuckles. “I’d have remembered.”

Wade grinned a little shyly. “Um, kind sir,” he muttered, sounding nervous, “I’m just, um. Passing through. On my way to. A place. Somewhere else, that’s not here.” 

Roleplaying with Wade was a little like pulling teeth, but Dennie didn’t mind. It was going to take a lot more patience to break through Wade’s inhibitions and get him to be relaxed and playful, but at least this roleplay was going better than the first time Dennie had tried... “On your way to the leather convention, hm?” Dennie asked silkily. The question achieved the deep russet blush he’d been hoping for. “Surely someone as beautiful as yourself is one of this year’s models.”

“Oh God, Dennie, shut up,” Wade finally grumbled, averting his eyes and biting on his lip. Failing to hide his amusement.

“That’s sort of a rude way to speak to your Da-your Dom,” Dennie remarked with a grin. (He’d come far too close to calling himself Wade’s Daddy far too many times.)

“It’s not against the Rules,” Wade mumbled, half-stating, half-questioning. But he glanced at Dennie out of the corner of his eye to gauge if Dennie was mad. Dennie gave him what he hoped passed for a reassuring smile.

“It’s not against the Rules,” Dennie confirmed, injecting as much levity into his tone as he could. “But I still might find a way to get revenge when you least expect it. That’s a Dom’s prerogative.”

Wade gulped, but his skin was still flushed; he was enjoying the light teasing.

“Now I’ve got just the thing for my little traveling leather convention model,” Dennie announced. Wade looked on curiously as Dennie whipped together a steaming mug of hot chocolate. “To warm up your hands,” Dennie said as he pushed the mug across the bar. “And by the way, I’m ordering you to wear gloves outside for the rest of winter.”

Wade choked on his first sip of cocoa at Dennie’s proclamation, but he managed to recover. “I’m sorry. I should have thought of that. I don’t have any with me.”

“I hadn’t given you the order yet. No need to be sorry for not predicting all my thoughts,” Dennie teased. Wade gripped the hot chocolate tightly between his two hands; possibly having taken Dennie’s admonition to warm them up as a direct order? Dennie reached across the bar and lightly removed Wade’s hands from the mug, stroking each of them gently. “I’ll give you a pair from the lost and found that you can wear home tonight.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Unfortunately, at that moment a few patrons came in, so Dennie was forced to actually do his job for around an hour, only infrequently able to stop in front of Wade for a quick touch or flirt. Wade didn’t seem to mind though. He sat quietly, every once in a while taking a small, polite sip of cocoa. Dennie liked having Wade in sight even when they couldn’t talk, and he thought Wade liked it too. Wade never seemed bored or antsy when he visited Dennie at the bar; something about sitting still on that particular stool while Dennie manned the bar calmed him. Maybe that was why Wade had decided to come, notwithstanding his bizarre mood at lunchtime.

“Hey, boss man!”

Dennie groaned (on the inside) when Terry Dickinson walked up to the open space at the bar between Wade and some of the other patrons to flag Dennie down for a drink. Terry was an irresponsible Dom who was constantly drinking. Dennie had always done his best to warn the subs and littles and girls and boys to stay away from Terry, but Frau Lick wasn’t an exclusive club and he couldn’t save everyone. Luckily tonight Terry seemed alone, but he was already unsteady on his feet. He must have pregamed.

“Terry. I’m not going to serve you if you’re already this drunk,” Dennie chastised, rinsing a glass with a white washcloth. Wade was looking over at Terry with a little wariness in his gaze; his hands clutched his cocoa protectively.

“Not drunk,” Terry slurred, teetering; he grabbed the empty barstool with Wade's coat on it for balance. “Just got here.”

“You drank before you got here,” Dennie shot back.

“How—how’cn y’ know that? Oh, hey, look! It’s the little man! Waaaaaaade!”

“Hullo,” Wade murmured, staring down into his cup. Dennie’s hackles raised at Wade’s discomfort. 

“Been so long since we’ve played!” Terry said, too loudly. He extended his arm as if to wrap it around Wade’s shoulders. “Gotta—I gotta get some of that tonight. Yer ass is—”

“Taken. _Wade_ is taken.” Dennie leveled his meanest glare at the drunken Dom across the bar. It worried him that Terry was within touching distance of Wade right now without Dennie being able to step in between them as a shield. (But he’d vault over the bar if it came to that.)

“Oh, right! Right! You’re his Daddy now! I forgot!” Terry laughed uproariously, slamming his hands on the bar with too much force. “Didn’t mean to uncroach. Encrouch. Ah! Encroach. Words, my friends! Words. So hard.” Terry punctuated that pointless statement with a sweeping swipe of his arms across the bar—catching Wade’s messenger bag and sending it toppling over the edge to land near Dennie’s feet. “Oh, sorry,” Terry lamented, sounding pitiful. “Don’t know—don’t know my own strength.”

He finally toddled off towards one of the booths; he was already cheerfully laughing again. Dennie sighed and bent down to pick up Wade’s bag from the ground. “You’ll probably want to hold on to this,” Dennie said as he stood back up. “Too many weirdoes out right—”

Something fell out.

Dennie stooped back down to pick it up. It was a yellow sheet of lined paper. Dennie was about to put it back in Wade’s bag, not interested in invading Wade’s privacy, when the word “Rule,” written in Wade’s prim, careful handwriting, caught his eye. Curiosity got the best of him; Dennie took a closer look.

Rule Violations

  1. Tuesday, 11:46am—Rule #5—called Dennie “Mr. Henderson” to Janine while walking in the park.
  2. Tuesday, 12:14pm—Rule #4—lied to Dennie when he asked me why I called.
  3. Tuesday, 12:17pm—Rule #4—lied to Dennie when I said I had to go back to work.



Dennie stood up to his full height with the paper in hand. Wade was leaning over the bar with his butt raised off the stool, clearly having just watched Dennie read it; he crashed back down into his seat at Dennie’s accusatory look. His features were twisted up with that nauseated expression Wade got when he’d been caught breaking a Rule.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Wade rushed to say, holding up his hands in the traditional ‘surrender’ sign.

“Sweetheart, I don’t even know what this is supposed to look like, let alone what it actually is,” Dennie admitted.

“I was going to give it to you,” Wade stammered, unresponsive. “I wasn’t hiding anything. I swear.”

“And just _when_ were you planning on giving it to me?”

Wade’s guilty expression told the whole story: not tonight! “I was waiting ‘til it was convenient,” Wade mumbled. He dropped his left hand to his lap; his other tapped out a staccato rhythm on the surface of the bar.

Dennie heard a patron calling for the bartender from the end of the bar. He cursed and folded up the paper, putting it in his back pocket. “Don’t move. We’re not done here.” Dennie left to go make a few drinks and close out a tab. When he finally made it back to Wade five or so minutes later, it was clear Wade had obeyed the order a little _too_ well: the fingers of his right hand were splayed pell-mell on the bar, as if he’d frozen stock still in the middle of his nervous tapping.

“You’ve done a wonderful job obeying, but you needn’t be quite so still,” Dennie soothed, stroking the top of Wade’s hand.

“Sorry. Sorry,” Wade sputtered, hastily withdrawing his hand into his lap, where he proceeded to twist both of his hands into a contorted jumble.

“You’re free to move, but stay on the stool—don’t leave the bar,” Dennie clarified the contours of his order. He felt bad that he’d not given Wade more clear directions before. “I need to go find Maggie so I can take my ‘lunch’ a little early.”

“Oh God, sir,” Wade blurted, his voice rising in pitch. “We don’t need to worry about this right now. I can wait until tomorrow. Or, or, whenever. I didn’t mean to ruin your lunch break. I should have kept the list in a more secure place. I promise it’s fine if we don’t do this right now.”

“Oh, you promise it’s fine, hm?” Dennie rejoined, leaning over the bar and grabbing one of Wade’s ears in a way that his grandmother would have been proud of. “How long has it been a Rule that I only punish you when you’re ‘fine’ with it? Since when do we postpone a spanking until it’s ‘convenient’ for you?”

“No, no, that’s not what I—”

“Don’t argue with me. Wait here until I get back.”

Dennie found Maggie in the office entering receipts. She and her Dom, Delilah, had owned the Frau Lick bar for a couple years now. (No luck on getting them to ban Terry, who had ‘never’ ‘hurt’ anyone, but the two of them were otherwise pretty cool.) “Maggie, I need to take lunch—can you take over the bar for a bit?”

“Sure thing,” Maggie replied, already standing up. “How long you need?”

Dennie grimaced. “I’m about to have a serious ‘discussion’ with my wayward boy, my hand to his butt. I’ll try not to take longer than a half hour.”

Maggie chuckled as she pulled her wavy dishwater blonde hair into a loose ponytail. “Don’t worry about it. You can have a full hour. Do you want to use the office?”

“If you’re not squicked by that, it would be a hell of a lot more comfortable than the cleaning closet.”

“It’s cool. You can owe me,” she winked. “I’ve got so much data entry and so few hours… I need a big strong man to take some of it off my hands later this week…”

“Sure, sure,” Dennie groused good-naturedly. “I’m going to take few minutes to prepare. Do you mind telling Wade I’ll be right out to get him?”

After Maggie left the room, Dennie pulled out Wade’s list and sunk into the little brown couch to peruse it. Dennie studied the three Rule violations for a moment until a suspicion grew. He pulled out his phone and checked his call log, and sure enough, he’d received the call from Wade at 12:13pm. So Wade had broken one of the Rules, then tried to call him shortly after—had he initially been calling to confess to the violation? He’d never called Dennie from work before, so that seemed like a reasonable assumption. But then why had he lied about it, if the entire purpose of his call had been to confess? Dennie would never have even known if he hadn’t called.

Dennie pressed his fingers to his temples, rubbing them vigorously for just a moment. Wade was a sweet boy—possibly the sweetest that Dennie had ever had. The Rules were tough for Wade to follow, but not because he was disobedient or bratty. No, Wade always tried, and always with such honest earnestness, to please.

But he tried too hard, and that was the crux of the problem with his submission—going ‘above and beyond’ the actual orders given. Giving _himself_ orders. Writing _his own_ Rules. Maybe other Doms hadn’t understood, or even cared, that Wade’s penchant for self-topping was a problem. That it made Wade tear himself apart inside with anxiety trying to guess what he could do to please his Dom. It tugged at Dennie’s heartstrings how much needless worry Wade subjected himself to, and it was for that reason that Dennie was committed, 110%, to breaking this bad habit—no matter how long it took, no matter how many spankings he had to administer.

Somehow or another, this list must be wrapped up in all this. Wade had written it—and tried to withhold it until a ‘convenient’ moment—because he thought, in some corner of his anxious mind, that that course of action would please Dennie. Now it was up to Dennie to figure out why.

* * *

In his mind’s eye, Wade had imagined that he would hand over the list of Rule violations at the perfect moment. Dennie would be sitting on his own couch, maybe in the morning after having a good night’s sleep, maybe with a cup of coffee in his hand that he was about to finish, and there’d be nothing on the schedule the rest of the day so Dennie wouldn’t feel rushed or frustrated that Wade’s disobedience had—yet again—forced Dennie’s hand.

Nothing ever went down how Wade wanted it to, did it?

Maggie, the tall blonde sub who managed Frau Lick, came out to the bar and spared him a commiserating look as she put on her apron. “He’s coming back in a sec,” she explained with a soft smile. Wade just shrugged and curled his fingers around his now-empty mug, but there were other customers to deal with so Maggie didn’t stick around to bear witness to his increasing despondency.

Wade wondered what Dennie was thinking right now. Not for the first time, Wade cringed at how this must have looked to him. It must have seemed like Wade intended to ‘accidentally’ drop the list, right in the middle of Dennie’s shift, so that he could force his punishment right then and there. Wade couldn’t stand the thought that Dennie thought Wade assumed himself so entitled to Dennie’s attention that he would purposefully ruin Dennie’s lunch break to get it.

Wade was also starting to wonder if he’d overreacted by even trying to tell Dennie about the Rule #5 violation in the first place. Yes, it was a Rule not to call Dennie Mr. Henderson, but surely Dennie didn’t really care that Wade had done it once to his coworker. Did Wade look like a demanding, needy child, to even think such a minor infraction deserved a punishment? Maybe Wade placed too much importance on the Rules. Maybe Dennie didn’t even remember Rule #5 existed and was annoyed that Wade was taking it so seriously.

Before Wade could spiral much further, someone tapped his shoulder, and he swung around on the barstool, startled. It was just Dennie. “Hey,” Dennie said with an affectionate little grin.

Dennie’s expression made him nervous. Dennie was pissed at him. Pissed off Doms didn’t smile at their disobedient submissives. So what could that smile mean? What was Dennie hiding? What—

 _Rule #3_ , Wade reminded himself, cutting his own paranoid speculations short. Dennie didn’t hide things or pretend to feel things he wasn’t feeling. If Dennie had an affectionate little grin on his face right now, it meant Dennie felt affectionate towards him right now, no matter how little Wade understood it or deserved it. “Hi,” Wade mumbled back, not getting up from the stool yet. He hadn’t been told to yet.

Dennie didn’t tell him to get up. Instead, Dennie grabbed Wade’s bag, beanie, and jacket. “This is all you had with you, right?” Dennie asked, slinging the bag over his shoulder and throwing Wade’s winter clothing over one of his arms.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Come on, then.” Wade slid off the stool and followed demurely as Dennie took him to the back hallway where the restrooms were. But instead of taking him into the bathroom like Wade had half-expected, Dennie opened the Staff Only door and led Wade into a small, drab room with a desk, a couple of filing cabinets, a set of lockers, and a faded coppery-colored couch pressed up against the wall. There was a window, but the curtain was drawn. “It’s our office,” Dennie explained. “Not as glamorous as your office at the law firm, I suspect.”

Now there was a question that had no right answer. Wade shrugged, but luckily Dennie didn’t seem to be expecting anything more than that. Dennie set Wade’s things down on the office chair and then pointed at the couch. “Sit, please.

Apologies danced on Wade’s lips, but he took his seat as directed without voicing them. He knew, now, that if he started trying to apologize, Dennie would say something infuriating, like, ‘Have I asked you for an apology? No? So why are you giving me one?’ So Wade just kept his mouth shut.

Dennie cut an imposing figure. He didn’t sit down on the couch but instead remained standing, leaning just a little of his weight on the desk behind him. He’d been growing out his beard, and Wade fantasized for a moment about running his fingers through the scratchy brown bristles. Fat chance of that happening tonight though.

Dennie reached into his back pocket and pulled out the folded piece of legal paper. Wade saw it and cringed with a sickening swell of embarrassment. He stared down at his hands in his lap, wishing he could disappear.

“I’m trying to understand this list,” Dennie said. “Can you explain it to me?”

It wasn’t really a question. “I broke all those Rules today,” Wade muttered.

When Dennie finally figured out that Wade wasn’t planning on saying anything more, he said, “Alright, I’d gathered that much. What I’m really asking is why you wrote them on a sheet of paper and hid it in your messenger bag for later, instead of just telling me. Wasn’t that why you called at lunch today? To tell me about the Rule #5 violation?”

Dennie had already worked it all out, like always. “It wasn’t the right time to tell you then,” Wade was forced to admit.

“Because…?”

Wasn’t it obvious? Was saying all this out loud part of the punishment? “I mean… you weren’t in the mood. To deal with it. It would have been annoying to deal with me right before your twelve-hour shift. That’s okay though,” Wade couldn’t help but adding, not wanting Dennie to think he was being a brat about this. “I understood.”

Dennie didn’t respond for a moment, so Wade chanced a glance at him through his eyelashes. His mouth was set in a grim line. Wade’s resolve broke. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “I know I’m ruining the whole evening. You’ve been working for,” Wade rapidly calculated it in his head, “seven hours already, and you’ve still got five to go. I swear I didn’t do this on purpose.”

“Do what?” Dennie asked back, sounding bewildered.

“Make you punish me. I can wait. I know Rule #5’s not really a big deal anyways—”

That spurred Dennie to action. He bent down over Wade, resting his hands on the back of the couch on either side of Wade’s head, boxing him in. “I hope you didn’t just say what I think you just said.”

Wade struggled to think of a response, but when he couldn’t come up with anything, Dennie leaned closer. It was intimidating; for a split second, Wade was worried Dennie was about to slap him across the face. Then Wade remembered that Dennie wasn’t like that. But he was still glaring, and the crushing weight of his disappointment made Wade sink down into the couch. “Is that what you think, Wade? That my Rules are ‘not really a big deal’?”

It was the furthest thing from the truth, and tears welled up in Wade’s eyes. But Dennie didn’t let up. “Because the Rules are really damn important to me, sweetheart. I expect you to follow every single one of them, all of the time, no exceptions. If that’s not the dynamic you want with me, you need to tell me sooner rather than later.”

“No, Dennie, no, that’s not what I meant,” Wade sobbed. “I don’t want to change our dynamic! I swear! I love your Rules. I’ve memorized them. I read them every day. I swear. I just didn’t want to bother you.”

“I’m having trouble understanding, sweetheart. One of my Rules specifically requires you to tell me when you’ve broken one of the other Rules—Rule #6—so that should indicate to you that I won’t be bothered if you tell me you’ve broken a Rule.” Dennie quirked his mouth up into a crooked grimace. “Albeit, I recognize now that Rule #6 is poorly drafted, given that it doesn’t specify how quickly or in what manner you need to inform me of a Rule violation.” Wade was surprised that Dennie could recall Rule #6’s exact wording off the top of his head. Did Dennie have the Rules memorized too? Or had he looked them up on his phone before bringing Wade in? “Believe you me, I’ll be amending it to fix that oversight. You’re not in trouble for failing to tell me you broke a Rule right then and there on the phone, because Rule #6 didn’t require that at the time.

“But I know you didn’t write that list and keep it in your bag because you thought that was a permissible course of action under Rule #6 as written,” Dennie continued. His gaze seemed to bore right down into the deepest parts of Wade’s soul. “No, that wasn’t it. You thought Rule #6 was _missing_ something, didn’t you?”

Wade shook his head. “No, no—”

“Yes. You did. You thought Rule #6 should read, ‘Always inform Dennie if you break a Rule and he doesn’t know about it, unless Dennie’s at work, or Dennie might not be in the mood, or it might be inconvenient, or Dennie might otherwise be bothered.’ Well? Isn’t that right?”

Wade continued to vigorously shake his head, but he couldn’t really deny it. That had been exactly what he’d been thinking.

“So the real issue here isn’t that you broke Rule #6,” Dennie concluded, standing back up. Wade wished dearly that he would come back. “Because you didn’t actually break Rule #6. You broke Rules #2 and #3. You obeyed someone else’s Rules—your own. You looked at one of my Rules and you said, ‘That can’t be right. Dennie must have meant something different,’ so you supplemented it with your own additional rule.”

Dennie always did this: he took the jumbled, confused mess in Wade’s head and stated it out loud, and whenever he did that, Wade’s mistakes suddenly became so obvious. “I can’t believe it,” Wade whispered.

“What can’t you believe, sweetheart?”

“That I broke Rule #3 again,” Wade admitted with a sob. “And Rule #2. I didn’t even realize it. How can you call me sweetheart right now? All I do is break the Rules. I broke, my God, four different Rules, just today. I’ve never been such a bad sub to anyone, in my life.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Dennie sat down next to Wade and pulled Wade across his chest. Wade could scarcely believe Dennie was touching him, but he flopped across Dennie anyways, unable to control his weeping. He spastically clutched one of Dennie’s sleeves. “Sweetheart. You’re not bad. You’re learning. It’s a process; it’s going to take time.”

“I s-should be learning faster,” Wade hiccupped, pressing his tearful face into Dennie’s shirt. Dennie’s woodsy scent overpowered even the alcohol-smell of his work shirt. “And showing you I can be obedient.”

“Dearest, do you think I gave you these Rules because I thought they’d be easy for you to follow?”

Wade didn’t know how to answer that. “You gave me the Rules because it pleases you when I follow them,” Wade mumbled back. Certainly if it pleased Dennie for Wade to follow the Rules, then Dennie must be annoyed that Wade seemed incapable of regularly following them?

Dennie pushed Wade back up to sitting and grasped his chin in one strong hand, making Wade uncomfortably withstand direct eye contact. “Why?”

“Why—why what? I don’t understand.”

“Why does it please me when you follow my Rules?”

Well that was an easy one; Dennie had taught him the answer to this question many times over at this point. “Because I’m supposed to be obedient and listen to what you say,” Wade recited dutifully. “I can’t submit to your orders if I don’t listen to you.”

Dennie slid his hand from Wade’s chin up into his hair, combing his fingers across Wade’s scalp. It felt a little like praise. “Good. Exactly right. Here’s a follow-up: why does it please me when you submit?”

Back to the hard questions. “Because you’re a Dom, so you like that kind of thing?” Wade ventured hesitantly.

Dennie chuckled, little laughter-lines forking out from next to his eyes. “That may be a part of it, but it’s not what I mean.”

Wade tried to duck his head, embarrassed at having gotten it wrong, but Dennie’s hand tightened in his hair, arresting him in place. “Sweetheart, it pleases me when you submit because you need it. How anxious were you feeling on the phone with me, trying to decide whether or not it was the ‘right time’ to tell me you’d broken Rule #5?”

“Fairly anxious,” Wade whispered in response.

“How much anxiety did you feel when you wrote that list, wondering to yourself, ‘when should I tell him about this? When will it be convenient?’”

“S-so much.”

“I don’t want your obedience for obedience’s sake. I want your obedience so I can eliminate that anxiety.” Dennie punctuated that by tugging Wade over his lap by the hair, pressing Wade’s face into the brown fabric of the couch. “You do what I tell you. No judgment calls; no guessing. Just you doing exactly as I say. That pleases me, love, because when you relax enough to let me really dominate you, it makes _you_ happy.”

Wade reflected that, while it was sort of humiliating to be having a conversation while he was toppled across Dennie’s legs, it was also calming. Wade was safe here; Dennie still liked him, which Wade knew because Dennie wouldn’t punish him if Dennie didn’t think he was worthy of continued correction. And Dennie wanted Wade to submit because it would help _Wade_ be happier—Dennie thought Wade’s happiness was worth something.

Wade worked up the courage, after a few moments of comfortable silence, to ask something that niggled. “What do you get out of all this, then, if all this is about is like, making me less neurotic? What if this is all just a wasted effort and it turns out I’m not really able to submit like that?”

Dennie rubbed his bum through the seat of his pants. “Darling, you do it all the time. After every single punishment, when you get that light, floaty feeling of trust and peace? That’s what I’m talking about.”

“So you mean you want me to be like that all time?” Wade wasn’t sure if that would work. He was a little too lax and needy after he got punished…

“Basically,” Dennie responded, not sounding particularly perturbed about it. “I don’t necessarily want you in subspace every waking second. But I want you to feel, at every moment of every day, complete and total freedom in your submission to me. I want you to feel it inside here”—Dennie touched the top of Wade’s head—“and in here.” Dennie tapped his back above where his heart was located. “No, I don’t just want you to feel it. I want you to know it with total certainty, so that it’s not even something you have to think about.

“And I’m well aware it’s not easy for you to trust anyone else with your real submission,” Dennie added, “so I’ll keep hitting you here”—Dennie lightly swatted Wade’s bum—“until you feel safe enough to give that to me. I’ll never be bothered by you needing a reminder of our Rules. It’ll never be inconvenient, or annoying, or any of the other words you’ve said tonight. It _pleases_ me, Wade, that you accept my Rules, do you best to obey them, and submit to my punishment when you break them.” Then Dennie chuckled a bit. “And it makes me really happy, pet, that you like living under my Rules enough to memorize them.”

Wade blushed. “It… that…”

“I trust, then, that you’ll never say again that breaking Rule #5 isn’t that big of a deal?”

“Oh God, sir, I really didn’t mean it that way, really. I just thought… I thought, when I said that, that maybe you’d be annoyed that I was demanding your undivided attention for something that was so minor. But I understand now that it doesn’t bother you to punish me for breaking your Rules. Even… even when I keep breaking the same ones in the same ways,” Wade mumbled with no small amount of shame.

“Dearest,” Dennie murmured, stroking Wade’s hair and back and bum, touching every part of him with assuredness and tenderness. “They’re hard Rules, and I’m an exacting Dom—you’re going to break them, sometimes over and over again, until we reform your habits. That goes for Rule #5 as well. At the risk of making you cry again, I don’t view it as a minor infraction that you called me Mr. Henderson in front of your friend. I’m your Dom, but I don’t see you as lesser than me; I don’t want you to see _yourself_ as lesser than me. Not even subconsciously. It’s why I gave you that Rule.”

Dennie’s words did make Wade start crying again, but the tears felt somehow looser, freer, than before. “Thank you,” Wade hiccupped. “Thank you for caring about my happiness.”

Dennie didn’t respond verbally, but he rested his hand proprietarily on Wade’s ass. Wade took it as confirmation of his affection.

“Now, kid, the only Rule violation left for us to cover is the lying you wrote about.”

That sentence swiftly punctured Wade’s happiness. He’d forgotten all about lying to Dennie on the phone, and now he kind of wanted to die. “I’m sorry,” he choked out.

“I know you’re sorry. And I know being dishonest is not a habit of yours. You aren’t a particularly good liar, Wade.” Dennie laughed a little. “Doesn’t change that you did lie, this time. And I take lying very seriously. If I can’t trust you, then I’m not in a position, as your Dominant, to safely give you what you need in this relationship.”

The words were like barbed wire cutting through his chest and lodging in his heart. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed again. “How can I earn back your trust?”

“Shh, darling,” Dennie cooed with a soothing stroke down Wade’s spine. “You didn’t lose my trust. They were little white lies, dear, and you told me about them immediately. I’m just making a bigger point about the importance of always being honest with me, no matter what. In order to make that point, I am going to punish you hard for these lies, even though they were harmless this time, to remind you of the importance of trust in a relationship like ours.”

Wade furiously nodded his acceptance of Dennie’s verdict.

“Sweetheart, you broke a lot of Rules today. I don’t think a hand spanking will do. There are paddles and floggers and God knows what else downstairs in the playrooms, and I could certainly go get one of those toys, but I don’t want to use something that impersonal on you right now. I want to use my belt. I want this punishment to remind you that it’s _me_ who’s in charge of you. That _I_ make the Rules. Not you. Not any other Dom you’ve ever been with. Only me _._ ”

An involuntary shudder rippled through Wade’s body. Mr. Crenshaw’s weapon of choice had always been his belt—his belt buckle, to be more precise, on all of Wade’s most vulnerable parts. Mr. Crenshaw and his weird Daddy friends had always laughed about wearing their ‘brat-destroyers’ around their waists, the straps constantly accessible for giving their boys a well-deserved whipping. “Please not the buckle,” he pleaded into the couch cushion, worried that his defiance might be interpreted as a Rule #1 violation but too scared to stay silent.

“Dearest. _Wade_. No,” Dennie said emphatically. “I would never hit you with the buckle. And I’ll only use it on your butt. Never anywhere else on your body.”

Wade nodded, but he still flinched when Dennie unbuckled his belt and drew it through his belt loops. Dennie pulled down Wade’s pants too, just far enough to expose his ass to the cool air in the office. “Wade, did somebody hit you with their belt buckle before?”

“Y-yes, sir.”

Dennie took in a sharp intake of breath. “I know you’re scared, sweetness. You’re being so brave.” Dennie laid the length of his doubled-over belt along Wade’s cheeks. “Do you feel how soft the leather is of this belt? It’s well-worn. I’ve owned this one since I was a teenager, so probably almost as long as you’ve been alive. It’s just an extension of my hand—of how much I care about you. Turn your head over your shoulder for a moment, dear.” Wade complied. “See how I’m protecting you from the buckle?” Dennie held up his right fist, and indeed, Wade could see the shiny silver buckle safely tucked inside of it. Dennie’s belt was black, and based on what Wade had felt, made of real leather and nothing else—Mr. Crenshaw’s favorite had been a brownish plastic thing, and Mr. Crenshaw’s notches had been rimmed with little metal eyelets. “I would never let this buckle touch you. You’re safe with me.”

Wade jerked his head back into the cushion without responding—he was still afraid, but he wanted to show Dennie he could take his punishment like a good boy.

 _I mean, a good submissive_ , Wade corrected himself. _I’m not a boy and he’s not my Daddy. I don’t do ‘Daddies’ anymore._

“I think I want you in a different position for this, actually. Come on, up to your knees…” Dennie opened his legs wide, then urged Wade to kneel between them so that they were front to front. Then Dennie gently shepherded Wade’s head to the crook of his neck and wrapped his left arm around Wade’s shoulder blades. It was basically a full-body hug, except for the unavoidable fact that Wade’s naked ass was still on full display. Dennie stroked Wade’s exposed backside with his belt again and kissed the top of Wade’s head. “Dearest, do you need to use your safeword?”

“I don’t know,” Wade admitted honestly, his lips brushing against Dennie’s throat. “I’m so scared. I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“You could never disappoint me. This punishment isn’t about me; it’s about you and what you need to feel safe and secure in my Rules for you. My regard for you is in no way dependent on you taking my belt. I’ll use my hand if you don’t want this.”

But Dennie had been right before: a hand spanking wouldn’t be enough to absolve Wade’s guilt, and Wade knew that—he needed hard, too-painful impact to reach that deep place inside him that begged to be owned by another. “This is already very different from how Mr. Crenshaw belted me,” he admitted softly, gripping Dennie’s bicep tightly with one hand and curling his other into the fabric of Dennie’s shirt.

“How did he belt you, sweetheart?” Dennie asked, scarcely louder than a whisper.

“He just did it. Whenever. For anything. He didn’t hug me, or tell me I wasn’t bad, or explain to me what rule I violated.” Wade scoffed a bit at that. “He didn’t really have formal rules to break."

Dennie caressed Wade’s back, light up and down strokes. Gentle. Unhurried. Dennie’s easy patience was what ultimately made Wade say, “I want more than a hand spanking too. So maybe… is it alright, if we try it, and then, um, if it’s too scary, I can say my safeword and we can figure something else out?”

“That’s perfectly fine, dearest. Lean in to me now, and stick your butt out just a bit more so I can see it better. There.” Dennie laid the belt along Wade’s bum again. “I’m going to start now. Use your safeword if you get scared.”

Wade didn’t know how many blows Dennie ultimately gave him. It was nothing at all like any belting he’d received in the past. Dennie hit the meat of his ass, and only the meat, in a steady, controlled rhythm. Dennie kept Wade still with the arm around his back, and muttered soothing, nonsense words into his hair after each strike. It was painful, but no worse than Dennie’s cruel metal paddle (in fact, Wade liked the buttery feel of the leather far better than any of Dennie’s paddles). Wade cried and dripped snot onto Dennie’s shoulder, but Dennie never scolded him for it or called him disgusting. The growing red-hot pain permeating his skin didn’t fill him with shame and desperation and sadness—instead, each strike of the belt felt like tangible proof of Dennie’s care for him.

It wasn’t scary at all.

Wade wasn’t really sure when it ended, but eventually Wade was aware that the blows had ceased and that he was wrapped up in a two-armed embrace. “Dennie,” Wade blubbered.

“You did so well, dearest. Such a brave boy. I’m so proud that you’re mine.”

Nothing more needed to be said. The free, floating feeling had taken over. Dennie was his Dom. Wade trusted Dennie. Wade knew that Dennie wanted him to be happy. Wade was safe here.

They huddled together on the couch for a long time, and both of them dozed off. But eventually, there was a knock on the office door, and Maggie poked her head in. “Er, sorry to interrupt, but it’s been like an hour and a half,” Maggie said, not sounding very sorry at all. She picked up Wade’s stuff from the desk chair and threw it onto the couch next to them as Dennie groaned.

“Sorry, Mags,” Dennie grumbled, stretching his arms above his head. Wade’s awareness and inhibitions returned; he leapt off Dennie’s lap to pull up his pants, trying and failing to ignore Maggie’s giggling. Dennie put his belt back on (Maggie laughed outright at that, and made some crude comment about Dennie “Daddying on the job”) and ushered Wade out of the office as quickly as he could.

“I don’t think you should drive,” Dennie said to Wade out in the hallway. “I’ll call you a cab.”

“Or. I could stay here,” Wade mumbled at the ground. “I could sit at the bar with you until your shift is done.”

“You have to get up for work tomorrow.”

“I don’t mind. I can’t—I don’t want to be alone.” Some of the floating feeling lingered in Wade’s head and heart, pushing away Wade’s embarrassment of his neediness; he knew, somehow, that Dennie didn’t mind that right now.

Dennie slotted his hand into Wade’s hair and pulled him in for a deep, dominating kiss. Wade sagged against Dennie’s chest; Dennie’s scratchy beard abraded Wade’s cheeks, and Wade couldn’t resist caressing it. “Do you have any personal days available? I’ll let you stay, and I’ll even take you home with me tonight, if you’re able to take tomorrow off and rest.”

Wade nodded his agreement. When they got back out to the bar, Dennie gave the barstool a very pointed glance. “Sit down, sweetheart,” Dennie ordered. Left to his own devices Wade might not have sat. But as he obeyed Dennie, and as own weight on the barstool pressed against the discomfort from his recent punishment, Wade felt something sharp and freeing well up inside him. Dennie’s dominance over him was palpable. The ache in his butt a physical reminder that Wade was lucky enough to live every single day under Dennie’s Rules.

* * *

It was plain to Dennie that, after everything that had happened last night, the Rules needed a little amending. Dennie let Wade sleep in a bit—he deserved it, after so willingly accepting a belting despite how much it terrified him—and then Dennie served Wade with breakfast in bed and a blowjob. (Wade had spiritedly returned the blowjob.) After getting those necessities out of the way, Dennie settled up against the headboard with his laptop and beckoned Wade to look along with him on the screen. “I’m amending Rule #6, and adding a new Rule, so I’m saving a new version of the document.”

Wade’s eyes bugged out cutely; he scrambled up to sitting and leaned his head on Dennie’s shoulder. “What’s the new Rule, Dennie?”

“The new Rule will require you to ask me for clarification if you don’t understand one of my Rules or orders,” Dennie replied. “Rule #6 was poorly written before, which I’m fixing next, because it didn’t tell you when you needed to inform me about Rule violations or specify how you needed to tell me about them. Now that we’ve added Rule #7, if something like this happens again—if I give you an order that isn’t clear, or you’re not sure how to apply a Rule to a specific situation—you won’t need to stagger around in the dark in the hopes that you guess what I want. Instead, you’ll be required to ask me what I meant. _Before_ you take any action.”

Wade pondered that for a second while Dennie wrote the new Rule into the Google Doc. “What if I think something’s clear, but then it turns out I misunderstood?”

“You won’t ever be in trouble for honestly misunderstanding something,” Dennie clarified. “It’s on me to give you clear Rules and orders that you can follow. But just like always, you’ll be in trouble if you misinterpret an unambiguous order because you assume I meant something I didn’t say.”

Wade nodded, but he still looked a little worried. Dennie reached over to give him a little stroke on the head. “Good job asking me to clarify,” Dennie praised; maybe it was condescending to say that, but Wade grinned shyly back, so Dennie figured praise was the right decision.

“Now, let’s fix up Rule #6,” Dennie said, moving the cursor up. “I’m not into having you write down your Rule violations,” he commented dryly, making Wade blush and avert his eyes. “So I’m going to require you to tell me in person, or at least on the phone. As for _when_ , what do you think about a requirement that you tell me you broke a Rule ‘as soon as possible’?”

Wade furrowed his eyebrows. “Um, I think that will work, except. What exactly counts as ‘as soon as possible’? I mean, what if I break a Rule and I’m like in the hospital and I don’t have my phone so I can’t tell you? Or what if we’re at a party? Or what if…” Wade bit his lip. “What if I don’t know I broke a Rule and I don’t realize it ‘til later? Will I be in trouble for not telling you sooner?

“Good questions.” Dennie had to stop and think for a second. Tailoring the Rule to cover every possible contingency would be challenging, and Dennie wasn’t certain it was possible. “You don’t need to tell me about Rule violations until you’re safe and physically able to do so. That means you aren’t going to be punished if you don’t have your phone and can’t call me or something like that. And as for if we’re at a party, you don’t need to tell me about Rules violations unless we’re both alone.”

Then Dennie had to address the hardest part of Wade’s question. “I won’t punish you for not telling me you broke a Rule if you didn’t know you broke it. That would be cruel, don’t you think, given that it would be impossible for you to have told me any earlier? But Wade… I don’t want that to be an excuse for you to be willfully blind to the possibility that you broke a Rule so you can avoid punishment under Rule #6. Does that make sense?”

Wade nodded furiously. “Don’t worry, sir, I spend time every night thinking about everything that happened during my day to make sure I didn’t break any Rules. I’d never be purposefully blind to the possibility that I broke one.”

Of course, his Wade would veer too far in the other direction. “You don’t need to be quite that meticulous,” Dennie responded. “I don’t want this to cause anxiety for you.”

“It’s not like that,” Wade mumbled back. “I like thinking about the Rules. I like thinking about all the things I did throughout the day and remembering that you were in charge of me when I did them.”

Wade’s earnestness touched Dennie’s heart in a way he couldn’t explain. “I like that too,” he responded hoarsely. He earned himself one of Wade’s rare beaming smiles for that. Dennie pulled himself together. “Now, dearest, what are you going to do if it turns out that, even after this amendment, I’ve left something out of Rule #6?”

“Come to you and ask you what to do, before taking any further action,” Wade replied. Christ. He sounded _chipper_ about it. Wade’s responsiveness to his new restriction confirmed that Wade blossomed under restraint—so long as his restrainer was someone he could trust (and not a total asshat, like this Mr. Crenshaw character he kept hearing about).

“Exactly right, my intelligent boy,” Dennie said before placing a chaste kiss on the top of Wade’s head. Wade blushed and smiled at the praise; Dennie was pleased to note, as well, that Wade didn’t argue back about ‘not being a boy.’

“Will you print me out a new copy?” Wade mumbled when Dennie moved to close the laptop.

Dennie remembered seeing a printer in Wade’s home office once. Was Wade out of ink or something? No. The request seemed weightier than that. “Of course, dear.” Dennie went to the printer and came back with a new printed copy, which Wade accepted eagerly. Dennie crawled back into bed, pulling Wade across his chest and tucking the covers up around them both. Still clutching the Rules document in his hands, Wade fell back asleep in moments. He emitted small, peaceful snores.

* * *

Dennie’s Rules for Wade v2  


  1. Always obey Dennie’s Rules and orders.
  2. Never obey rules or orders that Dennie didn’t give you.* 
    * *For purposes of this Rule, you may obey orders from your work supervisors as well as orders from law enforcement and emergency personnel.
  3. Never assume Dennie means something different than what Dennie said.
  4. Never lie to Dennie. (Sneakiness counts.) You may, however, state that you do not wish to talk about something.
  5. Never call Dennie “Mr. Henderson” out loud, even if you can’t always manage it in your head.
  6. Always inform Dennie by phone or in person as soon as possible* if you break a Rule and he doesn’t know about it. 
    * *“As soon as possible” means as soon as you are safe and physically able to talk to Dennie or call him. You need not tell Dennie about Rules violations in front of others. You need not tell Dennie you broke a Rule until you realize you broke it.
  7. _Wade doesn’t make the Rules!_ If you aren’t sure how to apply one of Dennie’s Rules or obey one of Dennie’s orders, always ask Dennie to clarify what he wants before you take further action.



**Author's Note:**

> Thank you again for reading! I have more ideas for Dennie and Wade; I don't want to make any promises for timelines or anything, but this pairing is dear to my heart so the series will eventually continue :)


End file.
